A restful stop for the TARDIS crew in modern-day Central Park becomes a
crisis when the Weeping Angels send Rory back to 1938. A pulp detective
novel suddenly begins narrating Rory's fate, providing the clues that
the Doctor and Amy need to come to the rescue. Reunited with River Song,
they discover that the Angels have overrun New York City and are using
it as an incubator for temporal energy, with Rory caught in the centre
of the trap. Only a paradox will defeat them, but to create one, the
Doctor may find himself separated from Amy and Rory forever...

Production

When Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill discussed their departure from
Doctor Who with executive producer Steven Moffat, both expressed a
desire to have Amy and Rory leave the show in a permanent way. Neither
actor wanted to undercut the emotion of their characters' farewell by
establishing a revolving door of return appearances, as had become common
for companions in recent years. Initially, Moffat thought that the best
monster to do away with Amy and Rory so irrevocably would be the Doctor's
arch-enemies, the Daleks.

However, during a family vacation to New York City in early 2011, Moffat
decided that this was the perfect setting for Amy and Rory's final story.
Although Season Thirty-Three's major location expedition would be to
Almería, Spain (for A Town Called
Mercy) it was agreed that the budget would allow for a short
window of filming in the Empire State as well. Since the Daleks had
already visited New York (in 2007's Daleks In
Manhattan / Evolution Of The Daleks), Moffat came to feel
that the Weeping Angels were a better fit for the setting. As such, it was
decided that the Daleks should instead appear in the season premiere,
which became Asylum Of The Daleks.

The adventure which would write out Amy and Rory then became known as
The Angels Take Manhattan, playing on the popular phrase (also
co-opted, for example, in the title of the 1984 comedy film The Muppets
Take Manhattan and the 1987 song First We Take Manhattan
written by Leonard Cohen) about achieving success in the Big Apple. Moffat
began writing the script in late January 2012. Early drafts saw more
obvious time manipulation at Winter Quay, with multiple versions of both
Rory and Sam Garner present at different ages. When the TARDIS was unable
to materialise in New York, it was shunted back in time to the Viking era.
Originally, the item made in ancient China at the Doctor's request was a
TARDIS-shaped puzzle box; River discovered it amongst Grayle's collection
and stored her vortex manipulator inside. The Doctor then used the vortex
manipulator to travel to 1938 New York after locating the puzzle box in a
museum in the twenty-first century. The Chinese foreman reappeared later
in the script: Grayle was transported back to his workshop by the Weeping
Angels, and was put to work making the very things he had collected as
antiques. (The final script instead saw Grayle wind up as a slave during
the Renaissance, as depicted in one of his paintings; however, this was
lost during editing.)

Moffat's biggest challenge in writing The Angels Take Manhattan was
deciding exactly how Amy and Rory should make their exit, especially
bearing in mind Gillan and Darvill's preference for the finality of this
event. Indeed, this led him to contemplate the obvious route of killing
off one or both characters. However, Moffat was guided by a scene he had
seeded into their first appearance in The Eleventh
Hour, in which the young Amelia Pond hears the TARDIS materialise
after spending all night waiting in her back garden -- despite the fact
that it had already been established that the Doctor didn't return to Amy
for twelve years. Moffat conceived their ultimate fate -- temporally
isolated from the Doctor, but happily growing old together in New York --
as best encapsulating the emotions of Amy and Rory's journey together, and
the optimism of young Amelia's all-night vigil.

The Angels Take Manhattan was recorded alongside Asylum Of The Daleks as Block Two of the
production schedule for Season Thirty-Three. Early in pre-production,
director Nick Hurran travelled to New York City to hunt for locations. One
of the places he visited was Central Park, where he photographed Bethesda
Fountain, constructed in 1868 by Emma Stebbins. The centrepiece of the
fountain was the sculpture of a tall angel (known as the Angel of the
Waters), but this figure was surrounded by four smaller cherubs
(representing peace, health, purity and temperance). Upon spotting this
picture back in Cardiff, Moffat was inspired to create the new breed of
cherub-shaped Weeping Angels, as he felt that their design was
particularly unsettling.

The first recording for The Angels Take Manhattan was the effects
shot of Amy and Rory falling from the roof of Winter Quay, completed at
Upper Boat Studios on March 23rd. Some exterior shots of the apartment
building were filmed at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff
University on April 4th. The next day was spent at Upper Boat, taping both
TARDIS scenes and the material in ancient China. On April 6th, a house on
Bute Street in Cardiff Bay provided Grayle's cellar, while the Winter Quay
elevator was in the nearby Bay Chambers office building. Another part of
Winter Quay -- this time the stairwell -- was, in real life, part of Royal
Fort House at Bristol University in Bristol; work there occurred on the
7th.

Hurran's team -- including only the three regulars amongst the cast --
then jetted off to New York City, where filming began on April 11th. Apart
from a brief shot in Times Square, this day was based in Central Park,
with the Bethesda Fountain amongst the shooting locations. One of the
scenes recorded there was the Doctor reading the letter which Amy had
secreted in the afterword of the Melody Malone book; as the cameras
rolled, Karen Gillan read Amy's lines to Matt Smith to help him engage
with the bittersweet emotion of the moment.

On the 12th, street shots were completed at a variety of locations but the
principal venue was Tudor City, an apartment complex which provided most
of the outdoor shots of Winter Quay. Although the Central Park recording
had attracted considerable attention, the Doctor Who team was
flabbergasted to discover more than one thousand fans waiting for them at
Tudor City -- a crowd which, fortunately, turned out to be largely
cooperative. The last day in America was the 13th, which was reserved for
recording wide shots of key New York landmarks and vistas.

Upon their return to Great Britain, the first stop for the Doctor
Who team was a house in St Nicholas, where scenes in Grayle's study
and main hall were filmed from April 16th to 18th. Here, Alex Kingston
rejoined the cast, almost a full year having elapsed since her last
appearance in The Wedding Of River Song.
On the 19th, Amy and Rory vanished from the Doctor's life as the graveyard
sequence was recorded at Box Cemetery in Llanelli (although Gillan and
Darvill still had an entire episode, The Power Of
Three, ahead of them). April 20th took cast and crew back to Upper
Boat, where shooting took place on the sets for both the TARDIS console
room and the roof of Winter Quay.

At this time, Doctor Who was in the process of moving from Upper
Boat into the Roath Lock production facility in Cardiff Bay. It was here
that work began on April 21st, for material in the Winter Quay apartment
and hallway as well as inside Grayle's car. That night, the exterior of
Grayle's mansion was actually the Glamorgan Building, part of Cardiff
University. More apartment and hallway scenes were completed on the 23rd
and 24th, with various pick-ups also taped on the latter day. Additional
footage inside Grayle's car was then recorded on the 25th, followed by
further inserts on the 27th (at Roath Lock) and the 30th (at Upper Boat).
This should have concluded work on The Angels In Manhattan, but it
was subsequently decided to film more material for the graveyard scene. As
such, an extra day at Box Cemetery was scheduled for June 28th, with Saul
Metzstein (who had directed Dinosaurs On A
Spaceship and A Town Called Mercy)
filling in for Hurran, who was unavailable.

For The Angels Take Manhattan, the Doctor Who logo was
given the green hue associated with the Statue of Liberty, and topped
with her crown. A significant trim in post-production involved the
Doctor and Amy reflecting on how much time was passing between the Time
Lord's visits -- something which Moffat now felt was more elegantly
conveyed in The Power Of Three, and
therefore needed less elucidation in the Weeping Angels tale. The
transmission of The Angels Take Manhattan on September 29th not
only drew the story of Amy and Rory to a close, but also brought a pause
to Season Thirty-Three. It would resume three months later with the
broadcast of the 2012 Christmas special, The
Snowmen.

Whereas several recent episodes had been preceded by specially-filmed
prequels, it was planned that The Angels In Manhattan would instead
be bolstered by an epilogue. Writer Chris Chibnall had introduced Rory's
father, Brian Williams, in two Season Thirty-Three episodes (Dinosaurs On A Spaceship and The Power Of Three) and there was interest
amongst the production team in wrapping up Brian's story. Chibnall
delivered a script entitled “Brian Pond” for what was intended
to be a DVD special feature; this depicted Brian being visited by an
American man named Anthony who turns out to be the adopted son of Rory and
Amy, and who delivers a letter from his father to his grandfather.

However, plans to record this epilogue in June alongside Pond Life
and the prequel for Asylum Of The Daleks
were scuppered when actor Mark Williams proved unavailable. Following the
broadcast of The Angels Take Manhattan, however, executive producer
Caroline Skinner suggested that Chibnall's script could be presented in
the form of storyboards. Arthur Darvill agreed to narrate what was now
called PS, and this postscript was released online on October
12th.